Monday, November 21, 2005

Al-Zarqawi eluded capture but left clues, source says - - MSNBC.com

BAGHDAD, Iraq - American special forces were tracking Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the head of Al-Qaida in Iraq, near the town of Ramadi two months ago, but the Jordanian-born terrorist leader escaped by jumping out of a moving vehicle, a senior U.S. military source tells NBC News.

Al-Zarqawi did, however, leave behind several key pieces of intelligence, the source said, the most important of which was his laptop computer.

Photos released by the military last month were taken from the 'My Pictures' folder of that laptop, the source said. It was also full of telephone numbers.

Also left behind in the car was a bag with about $100,000 in euro currency. Another bag contained mini, plug-in hard-drives, the source said, and evidently al-Zarqawi was using these to distribute information to his network in Iraq.

Al-Zarqawi was believed to have been headed to a secret meeting in Ramadi, and the area was being tracked by unmanned Predator reconnaissance aircraft.

Officials now believe that he jumped from a pickup truck and hid below an underpass when a car in front of the pickup was halted at a checkpoint."

This is an old story, but I just found out the details about all the pics he saved in the "my pictures" folder, and the use of the thumb drives to distribute information. Just found that interesting. This event occcured in April of this year. Word now is that he's dead, but we're still waiting for the DNA to come in. We can only hope! They got DNA from his laptop to compare it to. He may have just blown himself up to escape capture, and they're checking the DNA.